“Are you okay?”
I leaned back.
That question had followed me for eight years. Nurses asked it. Lawyers asked it. Friends asked it. My children asked it with their eyes before they had words.
For a long time, the answer had been no.
Then maybe.
Then yes, but tired.
Now?
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
Lena sat.
She had been with me since the children were toddlers and I was still climbing ranks with formula stains on my sleeves. She knew when to speak and when to let silence work.
Finally she said, “Seeing him didn’t heal anything, did it?”
“No.”
“But it changed something.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
I looked at the photos on my desk.
The children at six months, asleep in a pile.
The children at five, wearing paper crowns.
The children on Christmas morning inside the helicopter, their faces lit with adventure before they understood the wound waiting at Fort Carson.
